Samsung 48S90H - broken VRR

[XoR_]

Picture is worth more than thousand words so...

Otherwise other than that it would be a decent monitor. Has Tandem WOLED matte panel and very nice colors. Text looks ok on it.

Has also some other issues but compared to this its just nitpicking.

There is literally no near-black levels. Just pure black and then single dark gray (more like purple but anyways) level spanning N near-black levels.

FW is 1204. Unfortunately I updated the same day I got it so I don't know if earlier firmware was any better but I would assume not. I did upgrade because after connecting PS5 image looked strange.
It seems Samsung generally struggles with VRR as apparently they don't calibrate it even for their own QD-OLED panels and some TVs have it too bright and on some VRR causes severe black crush.

I am returning this otherwise very nice TV and I guess I will never ever buy anything from Samsung ever again and I recommend to also avoid this company or for that matter taking display reviews seriously. This is the kind of things which TV reviewers should always test and decimate final score and mention multiple times in review such that no one buys such faulty products and company behind product fixes them. I didn't see it mentioned in any S90H review that VRR doesn't work. Go figure.

 

[pendragon1]

does "broken" mean it doesnt actually do VRR or that youre unhappy with the image quality and the "blur"?
turned off all the "image processing"?

 

[XoR_]

Reference image without VRR. Camera isn't great but it should give some idea how game should look like normally. In real life it looks very good, very deep blacks and details nicely fade to black.

And this is with VRR

Does VRR itself work... technically yes but who even cares if picture looks like this?
It does look a bit less ridiculous when framerate is higher but just enabling VRR causes picture to get banding / loss of near-black details.

There is no dedicated processing options for VRR. Otherwise everything has been disabled.
The same happens with PS5 at VRR in 60Hz. Just enabling VRR even before there is any frame rate drop causes games to look broken.

Therefore VRR is completely unusable on this TV.

 

[pendragon1]

gross.
those would have been much better examples in the op...
your cables are good, not el cheapos? ever done a full reset on it?

 

[XoR_]

gross.
those would have been much better examples in the op...
your cables are good, not el cheapos? ever done a full reset on it?

I tried changing few service menu options but I have not tried any resets yet. I really doubt anything except either fw update or someone figuring out service menu option for VRR can help. As I understand so far no one found how to calibrate VRR compensation on Samsung OLED TVs. Though there is bazzilion of options so who knows...

HDMI cable not sure if someone told you - the very idea it can affect image quality is bs. Besides other monitors work perfectly with the same cables so...

 

[pendragon1]

I tried changing few service menu options but I have not tried any resets yet. I really doubt anything except either fw update or someone figuring out service menu option for VRR can help. As I understand so far no one found how to calibrate VRR compensation on Samsung OLED TVs. Though there is bazzilion of options so who knows...

HDMI cable not sure if someone told you - the very idea it can affect image quality is bs. Besides other monitors work perfectly with the same cables so...

its worth trying...
yeah they can. if its a pos low speed one it can fuck with it. ok, dont try another.
send it back.

 

[toast0]

HDMI cable not sure if someone told you - the very idea it can affect image quality is bs.

Different cables have different bandwidth without distortion. You don't need a 100% oxygen free solid gold cable or whatever, but el cheapo cables engineered to a lower spec may not do well with higher needs. That said, my experience with cables that need to go is speckles, not like red push or whatever that is.

Besides other monitors work perfectly with the same cables so...

Other monitors at the same framerate and resolution and bitdepth and vrr or maybe something less demanding?

I'd probably blame the monitor, but a cable swap is worth the time it takes to try.

 

[elvn]

I know you said VRR off looks fine, but have you tried VRR on and 165Hz mode off? Some of the flagship tandem LG OLED gaming tvs have problems like worse vrr flicker and exacerbated grey non-uniformity when 165hz mode is on, so people tend to keep it turned off.
Also, as a lot of people know, WOLED in particular have their gamma pinned to 120Hz, so when your frame rate range is below that, the blacks are lifted. However, now that 165Hz mode is available, when you go over 120Hz in your frame rate range, you get the opposite effect - the blacks are then crushed. I believe the smaller samsungs like your 48" one are WOLED instead of QD-OLED.

I'm not saying that any of those are explicitly what is causing your issue though, I really don't know. I agree with toast0 that a new cable (or active cable with a modern or different chip in it, or fiber one) might be worth a try. I've had other 4k screens that worked fine on a cable but a newer 144Hz gaming tv did not. If those other monitors you had that worked fine on your same cable were not 165hz hdmi that would be another difference, and another reason to test turning 165hz mode off.

. .

 

[XoR_]

I must admit I might overestimated state of VRR implementations of OLEDs. Two of my OLEDs (LG 48GQ900 and MSI 27QPX) have great VRR implementation. Apparently TVs are hardly as good.

These photos are from 60fps @ 165Hz at low brightness so worst case for this issue.
Still even at 100 brightness when image is very bright and >100fps at 120Hz I would say near black gradation looks meh on this TV. There are ways to improve it but then again there seems to be severe VRR flickering and somehow enabling VRR makes near-black overdrive artifacting very very visible. So badf in fact that very dark textures can light up when moving camera. This doesn't seem to be VRR friendly OLED. After LG 48GQ900 I expected to not have such issues. Gaming performance (lag and VRR) is one of the rare virtues of this LG monitor

Without VRR I hardly see any near black overdrive artifacts. Its quite a surprise given how bad this issue was on my old WOLED and how it was one of the main issues with LG G5 (at least with initial firmware. not sure if LG ever fixed it)
Otherwise TV has no diagonal lines. Panel looks clean without discolorations, dirty screen effects are very slight, etc.

I got this TV for bargain price that amounts to $999 and this is with shipment and tax included so its unlikely I will decide to return it even if it is not perfect display for games. It is quite great for desktop, movies and casual gaming.